Rome

by Matthew Thayer

  There are exceptions, of course, like the Thumb Camps up north. Spaced four days of hard travel apart, the camps are used by Gray Beard’s people and other clans when they need to move fast across the land. Only a stupid dick would screw one of those up. The old man used to make us gather extra wood to leave behind in case the next crew arrived in the middle of the night or in a snowstorm. Down south, we don’t see so much of that sharing and looking out for each other. I wonder if it’s because living is so much easier down here where it hardly ever snows. Until this drought I couldn’t imagine a richer environment.

  That’s the long way of saying we packed up our junk and headed for the Tiber without one look back.

  Boj-Koj held Maria’s hand most of the way to the river. I don’t know how, but they’ve figured out a way to communicate. They hardly stopped talking and hand signing as we left the peninsula behind and followed a dusty trail over the dunes and through dry forest to our launch spot a few miles upriver.

  Maria and I picked it this morning, an outside bend of the river where a steep gravel bank would make it an easy drag from the tree line. At the forest’s edge stood a dead pine that looked ready to be knocked over. It wasn’t as rotted as we thought and it took us a while rocking it back and forth, but we got the job done. There weren’t too many dangerous animals roaming the forest–mostly hyena and a few skinny wolves. The cats and bears never stray far from the river these days. With all the swamps and lakes dried up, the wildlife is packed in tight along the clear-running Tiber. The bawling of the herds reached us long before we hit the cracked, dry mud of the bank.

  We approached by the book, stopping a few hundred yards inside the tree line to build our first smoky fire. Carried by a light breeze, the smoke started doing its job almost right away. You could tell by the thundering of the herds charging away that the fire freaked them out big time. The woods are so dry the animals know the danger. I swear, deep down in their DNA they know droughts and wildfires don’t mix. (Maria’s on the fence on this theory, but I’m sure.)

  The kids and I rigged up enough torches out of pine needles and sticks so that everybody had one for the final push to the pine. After a half hour of pushing and pulling, the dead pine gave up with a loud crack. Maria screamed for the kids to move as I struggled to hold the limbless tree upright. Once it started going over all I could do was give it a good shove down the bank.

  It was a bummer to see the tree break in three pieces, but in the end it did make it easier to roll the two biggest chunks down the bank to the river’s edge. I had just enough rope to lash the two sections together to make a decent little raft. We’d get wet, but my dusty, sweaty crew wasn’t complaining about that. I lashed the packs and spears on top of the logs, figured out where everybody was going to hang on. Once everybody understood the plan and got down to their birthday suits, we teamed to shove the logs the final couple feet into the rushing water.

  We had done some swimming at the beach. I knew the mother and kids weren’t the strongest in the water, but they all could dogpaddle. Their eyes bugged out a bit when the current grabbed us and spun the raft around so we were headed backwards downstream, but nobody cried or panicked. I wiggled down to the end of the makeshift raft and was using my body as a rudder when the strangest sight floated into view.

  It looked like two guys being towed by a submarine. If this was a different time, I might have expected them to say “gun it” and see them pop up on water skis.

  “We’re fishing!” yelled the younger dude.

  “Help us,” croaked the elder.

  They were coming on too fast. I knew we’d never reach them before they passed, but they spread their arms and legs wide to create drag. Amazingly, they not only slowed down, for a few seconds they actually stopped and turned upstream.

  Unlashing the meteorite club from the side of my pack, I slipped its thong around my right wrist. “Maria, get the kids between you two. I don’t see any weapons but I don’t know about these guys. If we reach them they’re going to rock the boat, maybe turn it over.”

  They were coming on fast again, the boy laughing and the man with a determined scowl on his face. I almost mistimed it. They were about to float right past, and were cursing us for our poor efforts, when I reached out to slap the handle of my club into the young guy’s hand. The force of the pull shocked me. It felt like my arm was about to rip from its socket.

  “Now you’re fishing! We fish together!” the boy said with a crazy laugh. Was he scared or enjoying himself? I pulled them in and helped loop their line around the end of one of the logs. No wonder ski ropes popped into my mind when I first saw them. They had the shaft of a broken spear lashed to a Y at the end of the rope. The other end was hooked onto something big and powerful. Before long, the raft was cruising downriver at twice the speed of the current.

  My questions of what kind of fish we were fishing for went unanswered. They were too busy craning their necks to scan the shore ahead. Rounding a gentle bend, the older guy spotted a pair of his buddies standing by a fire on the northern bank.

  “Hoo! Hoo! Tell them we’re coming!”

  I think that’s what he said. One guy jumped and pointed downstream, then started heaping dead leaves on the fire like a crazy man. The other lookout grabbed a hoop drum and started banging.

  Turning to us, the elder motioned we should start kicking for shore. Whatever was under us was not going to be easily turned from its run to the sea. I doubted we had enough river left to stop it in time, and knew there was no way my crew was going to risk the whirlpools and rip currents of the river mouth. What had we gotten ourselves into?

  Unsure how they would react if I cast off their line, I made my battle plan and moved into the best position to protect the women and kids. We passed two more crews of firemen and drummers as we cut a wake toward the sea. Rounding a bend in the Tiber, we were about 30 yards from the bank and moving fast when I spotted the line of fires marking a landing spot. The bank swarmed with men, women and children waving their arms in the air. Drifting closer, kicking like crazy, we could hear shouts and songs, drums and flutes.

  “Come on you idiots, catch us,” the elder shouted.

  “Yeah, catch us you idiots,” the boy copied.

  Our kicking seemed to do no good. The giant swam as if it knew the shallows meant death. The mob on shore began forming a human chain, the men wading out into the river a lot farther than I expected. Their fires marked a perfect spot, a sandbar that extended into the river like a hook.

  The elder tuned to me and barked a warning. With points, growls and bits of trade language, he told me to get ready to take my party to shore. We loosened the lashings holding our bags and weapons and prepared to slide off the logs.

  We kicked hard one last time to help swing the raft so it was approaching the human chain broadside. The line of faces was coming into focus fast. As much as I wanted to be part of landing the nuclear submarine or whatever it was we were fighting, I knew it was going to be fucking chaos when we hit. It wasn’t worth getting hurt or killed over. I patted Maria and the mother on their shoulders to let them know it was time to bail.

  “Here we go! Off now!” We let go with about 20 feet to spare and were surprised to find we were in waist-deep water. At least it was waist deep for me. The kids had to tippy-toe, but we had good grips on them and the current didn’t carry them into the messy confusion.

  The fishermen weren’t as dumb as they looked. Right before the logs hit, the guys who were about to be bowled over went from a standing position to flat out floating in the water. They absorbed the hit like the rubbery arm of an octopus and clung to it like one too. Bodies swarmed the logs. Dozens of strong hands grabbed the taut line and held it. They knew if the fight carried past the sandbar and out to deep water the fish would pull them through the breakers and out to sea. The men gritted their teeth and cursed, dragging their bloody bare toes across the gravel and rocks.

  It’s hard to say if all the splashing is what spook
ed the fish or if it was the extra tension on the thick rope. It sensed trouble and tried its damnedest to pull away, roiling the water with its huge tail. But, like I said, they picked a good spot. The current carried the men to the sandbar and into knee-deep water where they could really dig in their heels. As the men battled, women and children shadowed them with torches, shouting advice and encouragement. After maybe 15 minutes the men reeled in enough slack to get the logs and the end of the line to shore where it could be tied off to a big rock.

  It took a long time for the exhausted sturgeon to rise to the surface. Scaled like some kind of prehistoric dinosaur, the giant fish was 29 feet and six and 3/4 inches long. (I’ll give you one guess which botanist measured the fish and estimated its weight to be just over two tons.) I figured the clan hooked the fish, but now saw they had somehow managed to tie a slipknot of heavy-gauge braided sealskin around its tail.

  Floating with its green, humped back and boney head out of the water, the sturgeon psyched itself up for one last battle. Maria says it was probably more than 150 years old. That’s a lot of bears, hippo, Cro-Magnons and others it either outfoxed or outfought.

  We learned the Fishers Clan had roped it a handful of days earlier and had been slowly wearing it down in shifts ever since. I take it the sturgeon didn’t pay the rope much attention the first few days. By then, the Fishers’ leader had already sent most of his people running for the coast to set up a landing spot. This ain’t their first rodeo. Sounds like they’ve caught sturgeon all over Europe and Western Asia. Anyway, they knew it would make a run for the sea and got ready.

  Gray Beard sure would have gotten a kick out this hunt. Ever since he took us under his wing and began teaching us how to live in this crazy world, the storyteller has warned us not to rush into unpredictable situations. “Be patient when you can! Move fast and true when you can’t!” If he’s said it once he’s said it 100 times.

  Sure enough, one of the young bucks splashed into the river with a spear and tried to kill the lunker with a two-handed stab to the heart. With a “slap” the huge fish jackknifed its tail to catch him square across the face. Even 50 feet away we could hear the wet smack over the shouting and laughing, the drums and the ever-present cries of crow and gull. The way he went flying backwards I figured he was dead.

  His buddies thought it was the funniest thing they ever saw. No lie, they were laughing it up as two guys hauled him to shore. It turned out he was just knocked cold, with a wicked cut running from his chin to his forehead. Before Maria could get down there and see if he wanted stitched up, he was back in the muddy water, joining the others in jabbing with spears trying to force the fish into beaching itself.

  Once the deal looked sealed, most of the female spectators quit watching and got busy. Boj-Koj grabbed Maria by the hand and waved her kids to follow them up the bank to join the crews hauling wood and setting up smoking racks. When I started to tag along, she hissed at me and pointed to the gang of men down by the river. “Do man job, not woman.”

  The sturgeon whacked another guy, broke his arm in two places, and just didn’t seem to be getting any weaker. It was their show and I didn’t want to interfere, but I ended up helping out a little. A couple of the young hunters and I finally got a rope around its ugly head. We all teamed to pull it up the bank far enough so the gills were on dry land. That finally took the fight out of the big fish. As soon as it was safe, we shouldered the sturgeon completely out of the water and over onto its back where we could get at its fat belly.

  The old guy from the log used a flint blade to split open the gut and get at a long egg sac full of roe. We stuffed our faces with sweet, warm Beluga caviar. Some guys, like me, carried double handfuls up the bank to share with their women and children. The women had made a bunch of fires, all sending sparks and smoke into the blazing afternoon sky. Apart from the crackling of the fires, rushing of the river and calls of birds, it was strangely quiet. Everybody was too busy eating to talk or play drums and flutes. Flies and bees buzzed over the carcass, but no nasty animals threatened us. (Not yet.)

  Though it probably sounds strange after the dogs were killed and all the other stuff happened, it was one of the best days of my life. I’ll never forget it.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Duarte: “What do you think the boys would say if we brought home a stray and her two kids?”

  Kaikane: “Hunter and Jones will bust your chops, that’s for sure.”

  Duarte: “They’d get over it.”

  Kaikane: “You thought this through? Gonna take them to North America?”

  Duarte: “No. I don’t know what I’m thinking. We can’t just leave them on their own.”

  Kaikane: “Maybe this new bunch will take them in.”

  Duarte: “Maybe.”

  From the log of Maria Duarte

  Chief Botanist

  We’ve experienced more stimuli in the last 20 hours than the last 200 days combined. It’s odd how life lulls us into the false belief we have control. Though experience loudly shouts we should know better, we establish routines, form relationships and expect them to carry on forever. When fate or the weather or a wolf decides otherwise, why are we surprised?

  This blind spot may be one of mankind’s greatest virtues. Like Sisyphus, we keep rolling our boulders uphill, keep trying to bring order to our lives. We long to slow down good times so we might savor them better, and speed things up when the shit’s hitting the fan. Though highly illogical, that never stops us from trying, or at least wishing. No wonder I chose to study plants. Humans have too many foibles and variables to ever be understood completely.

  What a melancholy way to begin a journal entry after such an action-packed, awe-inspiring day! Why didn’t I start by describing how fun it was dancing with Boj-Koj and the other women around the roaring fire, naked and smeared with mud? Or about riding the best wave ever? Or our strange river crossing and the epic battle with a 10-yard-long sturgeon that followed? I’ll get to all those topics, if not tonight, soon.

  The big question is, why am I still awake in these dark hours before dawn? I should be exhausted, passed out like Paul and the others. I can see him, or the lump of his body, curled up by the men’s fire. Lucky dog. Sleep will not come for me. My body buzzes from the mud and the dancing, but it’s the churning of my mind that denies me sleep. Questions of “what if?” and “why not?” collide with oaths of duty and honor. It’s not fair. Why did I have to make my first true new friend now? On the eve of setting sail and never returning, how did I let myself fall in love with her two beautiful children?

  Boj-Koj gave me the rundown on her ex-husband during our walk to the river. She said he was a stingy man who did not like sharing his food, his bed or his words. Named Boj-Boj, he was an older clan mate she grew up admiring. He laid claim to her on the night of her first menses and gave her only one gift, the name Boj-Koj after himself (a clan tradition). Being a wife, she said, meant serving as his pack animal, food gatherer, fire builder, butcher and wood hauler.

  “Love and sex?” I asked.

  “After number two baby, he rut less, beat more,” she said. “After three? No rut. Only beat.”

  That certainly put their abandonment in a different light. It won’t take much for her and the kids to improve their lot. She needs to attach herself to another clan. The Fishers are an obvious choice and I think they’d have her. At least two men and several of the older boys were sizing her up this evening as she danced the swimming fish dance with me and the other women.

  I don’t know how to counsel her. Considering the higher levels of thinking we experienced with clans in the north, this uncouth bunch would not be my first choice–probably not even second or third. The Fishers’ exclusive, male-dominated culture would suffocate me. And I don’t like the way they treat their children. Until age 10 or so, all kids are shunned by the men. After 10, boys are allowed entry to the men’s world, but must always remember their low standing in the pecking order. Cuffs, kicks and curses are
standard reprimands. Not surprisingly, the violence is mirrored in the young males’ interpersonal behavior. Five minutes rarely go by without a fight or shouting match amongst the boys.

  In many ways, the separation works to the advantage of the Fishers’ women. With testosterone confined to the male side of camp, all the women need to do is keep their heads down, finish their multitude of chores and retreat to the sanctuary of the female side. They even walk the trails in separate groups. This has allowed the Fishers’ women to develop a world free from the men, one where making jewelry, dancing, child rearing and gossiping reign supreme.

  No doubt Boj-Koj could be happy with the Fishers. My worry is her son, Boj-Moj. He’s so small and weak compared to the other kids his age. Without us around to protect him today he’d have worse than a few cuts and a bloody nose by now. What if he turns out to be a creep? A bully?

  Compared to northern clans, the Fishers are a poor excuse for a Cro-Magnon social unit. They lack history and culture. They have no storyteller, nobody to define the clan’s protocols, no one to remind them of the traits that elevate humans above the animals.

  I’ve been trying to imagine Boj-Koj and her kids as Green Turtles. That is what keeps me awake, wishing for the impossible. Though I know it cannot be, that doesn’t stop me from racking my brain for ways to pull it off.

  Our day with the fishing clan has given me a better perspective of how Boj-Koj’s former life must have been. Her old clan also maintained a rigid separation of the sexes. Men and women did not eat, work or sleep together. Unless married, they did not share stories or engage in idle banter.

  Married Fishers women prepare their man’s personal fire and lay his bedding, which, if they don’t have a pack dog, they carry on their backs all day on the trail. Before retreating to the communal women’s fire where the females and children eat and sleep, some women stand chatting with their spouses in the no man’s land between camps. Though public displays of affection appear to happen less than in many of the clans we’ve seen, there is handholding and snuggling and sneaking off to private areas to procreate–especially among the younger set.